The beleaguered estate of Prince could face further problems, this time from Italy. As previously reported, an Italian court ruled that Prince’s 1994 hit, “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” was plagiarized from a 1983 song by two Italian writers, Bruno Bergonzi and Michele Vicino.
That sentence has since been confirmed by Italy’s notoriously slow-moving judiciary and, now that Prince is no longer with us, the composers are keen for the matter to be resolved.
Bruno Bergonzi tells Billboard that the song that he co-wrote with Michele Vicino was called “Takin’ Me to Paradise” and was published by Warner Chappell Italy. Bergonzi says: “The recording artist was ‘Raynard. J, which was the pseudonym of Jay Rolandi, a session vocalist who also sang with the Italian disco group Firefly. The song wasn’t a big hit, but it did appear on a number of compilations that were distributed internationally. It continues to re-appear in DJ remixes.”